When they marry young

Balaka is one of the districts in Malawi where early marriages are common. Girls as young as 13 easily get married.

“If I could change the past, I would not marry at the age of 18,” says Twaibu William.

His wife, Margaret, raises her head, trying to look him in the eyes. He looks away, leaving her gazing at an empty space.

Twaibu continues: “Marrying early was a big mistake.”

And so begins the marriage story of Twaibu and Margaret William, a couple from Ntalika Village, Group Village Head Ntalika in Balaka District. It is a story that begins with regret.

Both cannot recall the year they tied the knot. All they remember is that Twaibu was 18 and Margaret 17 when they married. They now have six children, and the firstborn is 23.

First troubled years

“I had only finished Standard Eight and there was nothing I could do. My parents, being poor subsistence farmers, had eight children to look after. They could not afford to pay for my secondary school. I ended up marrying early,” says Twaibu.

Margaret, too, was born in a poor family and only went up to Standard Six.

“I could not help it. All my peers were getting married. So when I met Twaibu, we quickly got married,” she says.

First years in marriage, says Twaibu, were not easy.

“We had nothing. No job. No hoe. We had to start from the scratch,” he says.

Margaret adds there were times she wanted to give up.

“There were days I wanted to return to my parents’ home. But I knew that being poor, they too could not do much to help.

With time, they acquired a small farm have grown maize and cotton over the years.

“Somehow, we learnt how to survive,” Twaibu says.

For the not less 23 years they have been marriage, the Williams have seen a lot.

“We have seen our friends’ marriages breaking-up, divorcing, sometimes a husband running away leaving the wife with children helpless. Such children, due to poor parentage, are the ones that always end up marrying at 13,” she says.

Not only that.

She has seen those that marry young experiencing serious maternal woes.

“I know a number of girls that have died while giving birth, while some have developed pregnancy-related complications.

“The challenge is that during our maiden times, there was hardly a campaign for us women to give birth at hospitals. So most deliveries were done at home by either our mother-in-law or our traditional birth attendants. This worsened the pains of giving birth for a young wife,” Margaret says.

Family planning needed

In Malawi, almost 50 percent of girls marry before they reach the age of 18. In fact, a recent research by the NGO-Gender Coordination Network (NGO-GCN) shows that in Balaka, Mangochi, Mchinji and Rumphi, girls as young as 13 are already in marriage.

In fact, just a kilometre away from the William’s house, there is Ruth Alafredi. She says she married at 15 to an 18-year-old man and today, at 18, she has two children and is pregnant with the third.

“I quit school in Standard Seven because I felt I had come of age and I should no longer burden my parents who had seven other children to look after,” she says.

Asked why early marriages are common here, Alafredi says poverty is a driving cause.

“I have seen some friends who passed Standard Eight, but their parents had no money to send them to secondary school. They all ended up getting married,” she says.

Though research would agree with her that poverty is the driving cause, the Williams feel the ‘poverty’ theory is being overstretched.

“Yes we are poor. But I don’t think that should always be a reason to justify these early marriages. I think the principal cause is lack of family planning. We people are farmers and we make a little money out of it. If we can learn to have few children we can manage, I don’t think we can fail to look after fewer children and protect them from early marriages,” says Twaibu.

Their firstborn, a daughter, married last year after completing Form Four.

The Williams feel happy that, somehow, family planning issues are being discussed in the villages and people are seeing the wisdom behind them.

However, they are concerned that the law does not punish early marriages.

“We need a situation where early marriages should be a serious crime. Those practicing it and those perpetrating it, even parents, should face the law,” says Twaibu.

He and his wife feel that the law is encouraging early marriages by having 18 as the legal marriage age, with those between 15 and 18 being allowed to marry with parental consent.

Interestingly, even Alafredi feels the same way.

“We need to get married when we are fully mature,” she says.

The Williams were uncompromising in saying: “It is time we raised the marriage age to 21.”

The marriage age the Williams propose, however, is not new. A recent study by NGO-GCN also found some Malawians would prefer to have the marriage age raised to 21. In fact, according to Mary Shawa, principal secretary in the Ministry of Gender, Children and Community Development, government, in a nationwide survey held two years ago, also heard similar sentiments from the public.

So, should Malawi age really raised to 21?